Word structures in english

WORD STRUCTURE IN MODERN ENGLISH

  I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of morphemes. Allomorphs.

II.   Structural types of words.

III.   Principles of morphemic analysis.

  IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of stems. Derivational types of words.

I.   The morphological structure of a word. Morphemes. Types of Morphemes.  Allomorphs.

There are two levels of approach to the study of word- structure: the level of morphemic analysis and the level of derivational or word-formation analysis.

Word is the principal and basic unit of the language system, the largest on the morphologic and the smallest on the syntactic plane of linguistic analysis.

It has been universally acknowledged that a great many words have a composite nature and are made up of morphemes, the basic units on the morphemic level, which are defined as the smallest indivisible two-facet language units.

The term morpheme is derived from Greek morphe “form ”+ -eme. The Greek suffix –eme has been adopted by linguistic to denote the smallest unit or the minimum distinctive feature.

The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of form. A form in these cases a recurring discrete unit of speech. Morphemes occur in speech only as constituent parts of words, not independently, although a word may consist of single morpheme. Even a cursory examination of the morphemic structure of English words reveals that they are composed of morphemes of different types: root-morphemes and affixational morphemes. Words that consist of a root and an affix are called derived words or derivatives and are produced by the process of word building known as affixation (or derivation).

The root-morpheme is the lexical nucleus of the word; it has a very general and abstract lexical meaning common to a set of semantically related words constituting one word-cluster, e.g. (to) teach, teacher, teaching. Besides the lexical meaning root-morphemes possess all other types of meaning proper to morphemes except the part-of-speech meaning which is not found in roots.

Affixational morphemes include inflectional affixes or inflections and derivational affixes. Inflections carry only grammatical meaning and are thus relevant only for the formation of word-forms. Derivational affixes are relevant for building various types of words. They are lexically always dependent on the root which they modify. They possess the same types of meaning as found in roots, but unlike root-morphemes most of them have the part-of-speech meaning which makes them structurally the important part of the word as they condition the lexico-grammatical class the word belongs to. Due to this component of their meaning the derivational affixes are classified into affixes building different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Roots and derivational affixes are generally easily distinguished and the difference between them is clearly felt as, e.g., in the words helpless, handy, blackness, Londoner, refill, etc.: the root-morphemes help-, hand-, black-, London-, fill-, are understood as the lexical centers of the words, and –less, -y,      -ness, -er, re- are felt as morphemes dependent on these roots.

 Distinction is also made of free and bound morphemes.

Free morphemes coincide with word-forms of independently functioning words. It is obvious that free morphemes can be found only among roots, so the morpheme boy- in the word boy is a free morpheme; in the word undesirable there is only one free morpheme desire-; the word pen-holder has two free morphemes  pen- and hold-. It follows that bound morphemes are those that do not coincide with separate word- forms, consequently all derivational morphemes, such as –ness, -able, -er are bound. Root-morphemes may be both free and bound. The morphemes theor- in the words theory, theoretical, or horr- in the words horror, horrible, horrify; Angl- in  Anglo-Saxon; Afr- in Afro-Asian are all bound roots as there are no identical word-forms.

It should also be noted that morphemes may have different phonemic shapes. In the word-cluster please , pleasing , pleasure , pleasant the phonemic shapes of the word stand in complementary distribution or in alternation with each other. All the representations of the given morpheme, that manifest alternation are called allomorphs/or morphemic variants/ of that morpheme.

The combining form allo- from Greek allos “other” is used in linguistic terminology to denote elements of a group whose members together consistute a structural unit of the language (allophones, allomorphs). Thus, for example, -ion/ -tion/ -sion/ -ation are the positional variants of the same suffix, they do not differ in meaning or function but show a slight difference in sound form depending on the final phoneme of the preceding stem. They are considered as variants of one and the same morpheme and called its allomorphs.

Allomorph is defined as a positional variant of a morpheme occurring in a specific environment and so characterized by complementary description.

Complementary distribution is said to take place, when two linguistic variants cannot appear in the same environment.

Different morphemes are characterized by contrastive distribution, i.e. if they occur in the same environment they signal different meanings. The suffixes –able and –ed, for instance, are different morphemes, not allomorphs, because adjectives in –able mean “ capable of beings”.

Allomorphs will also occur among prefixes. Their form then depends on the initials of the stem with which they will assimilate.

Two or more sound forms of a stem existing under conditions of complementary distribution may also be regarded as allomorphs, as, for instance, in long a: length n.

II. Structural types of words.

The morphological analysis of word- structure on the morphemic level aims at splitting the word into its constituent morphemes – the basic units at this level of analysis – and at determining their number and types. The four types (root words, derived words, compound, shortenings) represent the main structural types of Modern English words, and conversion, derivation and composition the most productive ways of word building.

According to the number of morphemes words can be classified into monomorphic and polymorphic. Monomorphic or root-words consist of only one root-morpheme, e.g. small, dog, make, give, etc. All polymorphic word fall into two subgroups:  derived words and compound words – according to the number of root-morphemes they have. Derived words are composed of one root-morpheme and one or more derivational morphemes, e.g. acceptable, outdo, disagreeable, etc. Compound words are those which contain at least two root-morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant. There can be both root- and derivational morphemes in compounds as in pen-holder, light-mindedness, or only root-morphemes as in lamp-shade, eye-ball, etc.

These structural types are not of equal importance. The clue to the correct understanding of their comparative value lies in a careful consideration of: 1)the importance of each type in the existing wordstock, and 2) their frequency value in actual speech. Frequency is by far the most important factor. According to the available word counts made in different parts of speech, we find that derived words numerically constitute the largest class of words in the existing wordstock; derived nouns comprise approximately 67% of the total number, adjectives about 86%, whereas compound nouns make about 15% and adjectives about 4%. Root words come to 18% in nouns, i.e. a trifle more than the number of compound words; adjectives root words come to approximately 12%.

But we cannot fail to perceive that root-words occupy a predominant place. In English, according to the recent frequency counts, about 60% of the total number of nouns and 62% of the total number of adjectives in current use are root-words. Of the total number of adjectives and nouns, derived words comprise about 38% and 37% respectively while compound words comprise an insignificant 2% in nouns and 0.2% in adjectives. Thus it is the root-words that constitute the foundation and the backbone of the vocabulary and that are of paramount importance in speech. It should also be mentioned that root words are characterized by a high degree of collocability and a complex variety of meanings in contrast with words of other structural types whose semantic structures are much poorer. Root- words also serve as parent forms for all types of derived and compound words.

III. Principles of morphemic analysis.

In most cases the morphemic structure of words is transparent enough and individual morphemes clearly stand out within the word. The segmentation of words is generally carried out according to the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on the binary principle, i.e. each stage of the procedure involves two components the word immediately breaks into. At each stage these two components are referred to as the Immediate Constituents. Each Immediate Constituent at the next stage of analysis is in turn broken into smaller meaningful elements. The analysis is completed when we arrive at constituents incapable of further division, i.e. morphemes. These are referred to Ultimate Constituents.

A synchronic morphological analysis is most effectively accomplished by the procedure known as the analysis into Immediate Constituents. ICs are the two meaningful parts forming a large linguistic unity.

The method is based on the fact that a word characterized by morphological divisibility is involved in certain structural correlations. To sum up: as we break the word we obtain at any level only ICs one of which is the stem of the given word. All the time the analysis is based on the patterns characteristic of the English vocabulary. As a pattern showing the interdependence of all the constituents segregated at various stages, we obtain the following formula:

un+ { [ ( gent- + -le ) + -man ] + -ly}

Breaking a word into its Immediate Constituents we observe in each cut the structural order of the constituents.

A  diagram presenting the four cuts described looks as follows:

1. un- / gentlemanly

2.   un- / gentleman / — ly

3.   un- / gentle / — man / — ly

4.   un- / gentl / — e / — man / — ly

A similar analysis on the word-formation level showing not only the morphemic constituents of the word but also the structural pattern on which it is built.

The analysis of word-structure at the morphemic level must proceed to the stage of Ultimate Constituents. For example, the noun friendliness is first segmented into the ICs: [frendlı-] recurring in the adjectives friendly-looking and friendly and [-nıs] found in a countless number  of nouns, such as unhappiness, blackness, sameness, etc. the IC [-nıs] is at the same time an UC of the word, as it cannot be broken into any smaller elements possessing both sound-form and meaning. Any further division of –ness would give individual speech-sounds which denote nothing by themselves. The IC [frendlı-] is next broken into the ICs [-lı] and [frend-] which are both UCs of the word.

Morphemic analysis under the method of Ultimate Constituents may be carried out on the basis of two principles: the so-called root-principle and affix principle.

According to the affix principle the splitting of the word into its constituent morphemes is based on the identification of the affix within a set of words, e.g. the identification of the suffix –er leads to the segmentation of words singer, teacher, swimmer into the derivational morpheme – er  and the roots teach- , sing-, drive-.

According to the root-principle, the segmentation of the word is based on the identification of the root-morpheme in a word-cluster, for example the identification of the root-morpheme agree-  in the words agreeable, agreement, disagree.

As a rule, the application of these principles is sufficient for the morphemic segmentation of words.

However, the morphemic structure of words in a number of cases defies such analysis, as it is not always so transparent and simple as in the cases mentioned above. Sometimes not only the segmentation of words into morphemes, but the recognition of certain sound-clusters as morphemes become doubtful which naturally affects the classification of words. In words like retain, detain, contain or  receive, deceive, conceive, perceive the sound-clusters [rı-], [dı-] seem to be singled quite easily, on the other hand, they undoubtedly have nothing in common with the phonetically identical prefixes  re-, de- as found in words re-write, re-organize, de-organize, de-code. Moreover, neither the sound-cluster [rı-] or [dı-], nor the [-teın] or [-sı:v] possess any lexical or functional meaning of their own. Yet, these sound-clusters are felt as having a certain meaning because [rı-] distinguishes retain from detain and [-teın] distinguishes retain from receive.

It follows that all these sound-clusters have a differential and a certain distributional meaning as their order arrangement point to the affixal status of re-, de-, con-, per- and makes one understand —tain and –ceive as roots. The differential and distributional meanings seem to give sufficient ground to recognize these sound-clusters as morphemes, but as they lack lexical meaning of their own, they are set apart from all other types of morphemes and are known in linguistic literature as pseudo- morphemes. Pseudo- morphemes of the same kind  are also encountered in words like rusty-fusty.

IV.   Derivational level of analysis. Stems. Types of Stems. Derivational types of word.

The morphemic analysis of words only defines the constituent morphemes, determining their types and their meaning but does not reveal the hierarchy of the morphemes comprising the word. Words are no mere sum totals of morpheme, the latter reveal a definite, sometimes very complex interrelation. Morphemes are arranged according to certain rules, the arrangement differing in various types of words and particular groups within the same types. The pattern of morpheme arrangement underlies the classification of words into different types and enables one to understand how new words appear in the language. These relations within the word and the interrelations between different types and classes of words are known as derivative or word- formation relations.

The analysis of derivative relations aims at establishing a correlation between different types and the structural patterns words are built on. The basic unit at the derivational level is the stem.

The stem is defined as that part of the word which remains unchanged throughout its paradigm, thus the stem which appears in the paradigm (to) ask ( ), asks, asked, asking is ask-; thestem of the word singer ( ), singer’s, singers, singers’ is singer-. It is the stem of the word that takes the inflections which shape the word grammatically as one or another part of speech.

The structure of stems should be described in terms of IC’s analysis, which at this level aims at establishing the patterns of typical derivative relations within the stem and the derivative correlation between stems of different types.

There are three types of stems: simple, derived and compound.

Simple stems are semantically non-motivated and do not constitute a pattern on analogy with which new stems may be modeled. Simple stems are generally monomorphic and phonetically identical with the root morpheme. The derivational structure of stems does not always coincide with the result of morphemic analysis. Comparison proves that not all morphemes relevant at the morphemic level are relevant at the derivational level of analysis. It follows that bound morphemes and all types of pseudo- morphemes are irrelevant to the derivational structure of stems as they do not meet requirements of double opposition and derivative interrelations. So the stem of such words as retain, receive, horrible, pocket, motion, etc. should be regarded as simple, non- motivated stems.

Derived stems are built on stems of various structures though which they are motivated, i.e. derived stems are understood on the basis  of the derivative relations between their IC’s and the correlated stems. The derived stems are mostly polymorphic in which case the segmentation results only in one IC that is itself a stem, the other IC being necessarily a derivational affix.

Derived stems are not necessarily polymorphic.

Compound stems are made up of two IC’s, both of which are themselves stems, for example match-box, driving-suit, pen-holder, etc. It is built by joining of two stems, one of which is simple, the other derived.

In more complex cases the result of the analysis at the two levels sometimes seems even to contracted one another.

The derivational types of words are classified according to the structure of their stems into simple, derived and compound words.

Derived words are those composed of one root- morpheme and one or more derivational morpheme.

Compound words contain at least two root- morphemes, the number of derivational morphemes being insignificant.

Derivational compound is a word formed by a simultaneous process of composition and derivational.

Compound words proper are formed by joining together stems of word already available in the language.

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Morphemes and their definition. Classification of morphemes (semantic
and structural). Free and bound morphemes. Types of words: simple,
derived, compound and compound-derived.

Words
generally consist of morphemes defined as the smallest indivisible
meaningful two-facet lang units. A positional variant of a morpheme
is called an allomorph. E.g. ancient.

A morpheme is an ultimate
constituent of immediate constituents. Morphemes can be classified
structurally acc to the degree of independence:

1. free
morphemes which coincide with the stem or a word-form.

E.g.
friend,
book, pen, etc.

2. bound
morpheme which is constituent part of a word.

E.g. -ship,
-ness, re-, dis-, etc.

3.
semi-bound
morpheme which can function as an affix & as a free morpheme.

E.g. man
= -man (gentleman), like = -like.

Semantically morphemes are
classified into:

• root
  morphemes: helpless,
  refill.

• affixational
  morphemes: -ship,
  -dom, dis-, un-.

Besides the
meaning proper to root morphemes they possess the part of speech
meaning & generalized lexical meaning.

Acc to the
number of morphemes words are classified into monomorphic
(root) words (dog,
go, wall)
and polymorphic
consisting of one or two roots & suffixal morphemes
(friendliness).

The morphemic analysis enables
us to distinguish certain classes of words.

Primary
words
which fall into

1. derived
   words
   with more than one bound form (receive,
   detain, repeat)

2. morpheme
   words
   consisting of a single morpheme (boy,
   girl, nut).

Secondary
words
which are divide into 2 subgroups:

1. compound
   words having more than one free form: snowdrop,
   schoolgirl.

2. secondary-derived
   contining one free form & a bound form: boyish.

The
relations within a word & the interrelation btw different classes
of words are known as derivational
or word-formation
relations.

The basic unit on the
derivational level is a stem. Stems may be:

• simple
  – they are non-motivated: head,
  girl;

• derived
  – semantically & structurally motivated build on stems of
  various structure to which they are motivated: girlish,
  girlishness, to winter;

• compound
  – maid up of 2 immediate constituents both of which are stems:
  matchbox,
  swimming-suit.

Accordingly
there are simple words (chair,
pen),
derived (reader,
inexperienced),
compound (bluebell,
blackboard),
compound-derived (absent-mindedness).

1. Synonymy and antonymy in modern English.

Synonymy. The problem of its definition. Criteria of synonyms.
Ideographic, stylistic, absolute synonyms. Polysemy and synonymy.
Antonymy. Types of antonyms.

Synonyms
are
two or more words of the same lang belonging to the same part of
speech and possessing one or more identical denotational meaning
interchangeable at least in some context without any considerable
alteration in denotational meaning differing in phonemic shape,
shades of meaning, connotations, style, valency, idiomaticity.

E.g. Hope
– expectation – anticipation.

They all
mean having smth in mind which is likely to happen. They differ in
connotations. Expectation
may
be of evil or good, anticipation
is a pleasurable expectation of smth good, hope
is
not only a belief but a desire that some event will happen.

Synonyms
may be classified into stylistic,
idiographic &
absolute.

Stylistic
synonyms imply no interchangeability in context because the
underlining situations are different.

E.g. Child
– infant; dad – father.

They are similar in the
denotational aspect but different in the connotational aspect.

Idiographic
synonyms
present a still lower degree of semantic proximity & is observed
when the pragmatic & connotational aspects are similar but there
are certain differences in the denotational aspect of meaning.

E.g. forest
(лес)
– wood (лес,
древесина);

apartment
(меблированные комнаты) – flat
(квартира).

Absolute
synonyms
are very rare.

Each
synonymic group comprises a dominant element. This synonymic dominant
is the most general term potentially containing the specific features
rendered by all the other members of the synonymic group.

In the
series leave
– depart – quit – retire – clear out the
verb leave
being general and stylistically & emotionally neutral can stand
for each of the other terms.

Antonyms
may
be defined as two words of the same lang belonging to the same part
of speech identical in style & nearly identical in distribution
associated & used together so that they render contrary or
contradictory notions.

Antonyms
are usually classified into absolute or root antonyms (late
— early)
and derivational antonyms (known
— unknown).

Acc to another classification
antonyms are subdivided into:

1)
contradictories,
i.e. to use one of the terms is to contradict the other.

E.g. dead
– alive, single – married.

2)
contraries
differ from contradictories because the latter admit of no
possibility btw them. Contraries admit such possibility btw them.
This may be observed in cold
– hot,
and cool
and
warm
may
be intermediate members.

3)
incompatibles
– the semantic relations of incompatibility may be described as the
relations of exclusion but not of contradiction.

E.g.
morning
≠ afternoon ≠ evening ≠ night

Not all the words have
antonyms.

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The study of word structure is called morphology. Understanding word structure helps us:

• improve spelling
• expand vocabulary

In studying word structure, we start by looking at a few key concepts first:

• root words
• prefixes
• suffixes

Root words are words, or parts of words, that can usually stand alone. The following are all root words:

• elbow
• fast
• nudge

Most root words can be changed in various ways by adding additional elements to them:

• elbows
• faster
• nudged

Each of the examples above has been altered by adding an element at the end. The elements at the end, namely -s, -er, and -ed, cannot stand alone. These elements are called suffixes.

Sometimes, elements are added to the beginning of a word:

• expose → underexpose
• appear → disappear
• take → overtake
• event → non-event

The elements added to the beginnings of the words above cannot stand alone, and are called prefixes.

Sometimes, when we add a prefix or suffix to a word, we create a new word. This process is called derivation.

• appear → appearance

The two words above are definitely two different words — the first is a verb, the second a noun. Their meanings and uses in sentences are different. In a dictionary, we would have to look them up separately, even though they have a common root word.

Sometimes, when we add a suffix, we don’t create a new word at all. This process is called inflection.

• cat → cats

In the above example, we really have just one word — the first is singular, the second plural. In a dictionary, we might look for cat, but we wouldn’t look for a separate entry for cats.

When words are built from a common root word, or a common ancestor in history (often a Latin word), we call the group of words a word family.

• grammar, grammatical, grammatically, ungrammatical, ungrammatically

The terms above are all built from a common root word, grammar. This word family includes a noun, adjectives, and adverbs.

The terms below are built from a common ancestor, the Latin word spectare, meaning ‘to look’:

• inspect, spectacle, spectacular, inspection

This word family includes verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

WORD-STRUCTURE AND WORD-FORMATION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

How do we guess the meanings of the words we have never encountered before? Attachment: attach (root morpheme) + -ment (suffix) attachment – smth. you add to a document ? Attachmeant ? to mean – meant // -ment N-forming suffix v the file you meant to attach to your email but did not

This is one of the central questions of lexicology: the structure of words and the ways of building new words Lexicology studies the internal structure of words and the rules of word-formation, the formation of new words from the resources of this particular language. Together with the borrowing, wordforming provides for enlarging and enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Morphemes What is the smallest meaningful unit of the language? Sound / phoneme? ? ? Word? ? ? ring > ringlet MORPHEME! Morpheme is the minimum meaningful language unit. Morphemes are not independent, they occur only as parts of words, although a word may consist of a single morpheme (love, house, red, cry).

Types of words from the morphological point of view simple derived (friend) (friendly) words compound (girl-friend) compoundderived (eco-friendly)

Phonetically conditioned positional variants of a morpheme are called allomorphs. The negative prefix in- has the following allomorphs: im- (impossible), ir- (irregular), il- (illegal). Morphemes can be classified: a) from the semantic point of view; b) from the structural point of view.

a) Semantically morphemes fall into: roots the lexical nucleus of a word, shared by other members of the word-family and does not admit any further analysis into ultimate constituents non-roots inflexions (functional) prefixes affixes (derivational) infixes suffixes

b) Structurally morphemes fall into: free rain bound rainless cranberry morphemes cranberry, receive semibound half-rain

Morphemic and word-formation analysis The procedure employed for segmenting words is morphemic analysis based on the method of Immediate and Ultimate Constituents. This method is based on a binary principle. At each stage two components are singled out (referred to as the Immediate Constituents (ICs)). Each IC at the next stage of the analysis is broken into two smaller meaningful units. The analysis is complete when we arrive at further unsegmentable units, i. e. morphemes. They are called Ultimate Constituents (UCs).

joyfully joyful joy -ly -ful

Structural word-formation analysis proceeds further, studying the structural correlation with other words. It is done with the help of the principle of oppositions, i. e. by studying the partly similar elements, the difference between which is functionally relevant. In our case joyfully and joyful are members of a morphemic opposition. Their distinctive feature is the suffix -ly, like in other oppositions of the same kind: joyful dreadful beautiful joyfully dreadfully beautifully Observing this proportional opposition we may conclude that there is a type of derived adverbs consisting of an adjective stem and the suffix -ly.

Structural morphemic analysis is helpful in distinguishing compound words formed by composition from the ones formed by other wordformation processes. to daydream to whitewash composition or composition + conversion? day (N) + dream (N) = daydream (N) composition daydream (N) > to daydream (V) conversion white (ADJ) + to wash (V) = to whitewash (V) composition

Word-formation A characteristic feature of all human languages is the potential to create new words. The categories of noun, verb, adjective, and adverb are open in the sense that new members are constantly being added. The most common types of word formation are derivation (affixation), composition (compounding), conversion. The minor types of word formation are clipping, blending, back-formation, abbreviation, sound-imitation, soundinterchange, distinctive stress.

Affixation (Derivation) Words which consist of a root and an affix (or several affixes) are called derived words or derivatives. Prefixes seldom affect the basic lexico-grammatical component of the stem meaning. A simple word and its prefixed derivative usually belong to the same part of speech: read — reread (v); happy — unhappy (adj. ), but be- + adj. > v (belittle), en- + n > v (encase). Suffixes mostly form a different part of speech and usually modify the lexical meaning of the base: free (adj. ) + -dom > n (freedom) but ring (n) + -let > ringlet (n)

Classifications of affixes according to their origin (native and borrowed) Native suffixes: -er (worker), -ness (loneliness), -ing (feeling), -hood (brotherhood), -ship (friendship), -th (truth), -some (handsome), -en (darken), -ful (colorful) Native prefixes: a- (awake) Borrowed suffixes: -ant (deodorant) (Latin), (parentage) -age, -able (readable), -ance (clearance), ard (Spaniard) (French), -ist (linguist), -ism (communism) (Greek) Borrowed prefixes: pre- (prehistoric), post- (postwar), non- (nonhuman), anti- (antiaircraft) (Romanic and Greek) Words that are made up of elements derived from different languages are called hybrids: readable

according to their semantic characteristics: polysemantic, synonymous and homonymous Polysemantic: -у 1) composed of, full of (bony, stony), 2) characterized by (rainy, cloudy), 3) having the character of (bushy, inky). Synonymous affixes: 1) doer of the action: -er, -ist, -ant (lover, journalist, defendant), 2) collectivity: -age, -dom, -(e)ry (officialdom, peasantry), 3) diminutiveness: -ie, -lit, -ling ( birdie, girlie, wolfling) Homonymic: -ly: 1) Adj. + -ly > Adv. (quickly), 2) N + -ly > Adj. (lovely)

Affixes can also be classified into productive (living) and non-productive (dead). Productive: 1) N-forming suffixes: -er, -ing, -ness (blogging, facebooker) 2) V-forming: -ize, -ate (napsterize) 3) Adj. — forming: -y, -ish, -ed, -able, -less (hay-smoked, proceedable, multitalentless) 4) Adv. -forming: -ly (muchly) 5) Prefixes: un-, re-, dis/de- (unfollow, retweet, defriend) Non-productive: 1) N-forming: -th, -hood 2) Adj. -forming: -ly, -some, -en, -ous 3) V-forming: -en

Word-composition (compounding) Compound words are words consisting of at least two stems which occur in the language as free forms (blackbird). Compounding is highly productive in English. Mostly it can be found in nouns (doorstep), adjectives (winedark), and verbs (stage-manage). Among noun compounds the following types can be found: N + N > N (steamboat) V + N > N (crybaby) Adj + N > N (strongbox). Compound adjectives can be of the following types: Adj. + Adj. > Adj. (red-hot) N + Adj. > Adj. (bloodthirsty) N + V > Adj. (snow-covered).

The constituent members of a compound are not always equal. Some compounds are made up of a determining (basic part = determinatum) and a determined part (serves to differentiate the basic part = determinant). Thus, in steamboat , red in red-hot are determinants, because steamboat is a type of boat, redhot is a degree of hotness. When the meaning of the compound can be inferred from its parts it is called transparent (hairbrush, bedroom, dancing-hall) and non-transparent or idiomatic, when it cannot be inferred from the meaning of components (lazybones, football).

Criteria of differentiation b/w a compound word and a word-combination 1) Graphic — solid or hyphenated spelling airline, air-line, air line 2) Phonological – stress ‘ice-cream (compound) vs. ‘ice ‘cream (free phrase) but this rule does not hold with adjectives: ‘gray’green, ‘easy-‘going Besides, stress can differentiate the meaning of compounds: man’kind «the human race» and ‘mankind «men contrasted with women»

3) Semantic – a compound expresses a single idea which is not identical in meaning to the sum of the meanings of its components in a free phrase. Tallboy does not even denote a person, but a piece of furniture ! But the semantic criterion alone cannot prove anything as phraseological units also convey a single concept. 4) Morphological – a compound is stable a tallboy — a tall and handsome boy a tallboy – a tallestboy 5) syntactic – a compound has one function in the sentence: There is a tallboy in the corner. Ø In most cases, only several criteria can convincingly classify a lexical unit as either a compound word or a word group.

Conversion is an extremely productive way of forming words in Modern English (knife — to knife, to take — a take). It is treated differently in linguistic literature. Some linguists define it as a morphological way of forming words (Smirnitsky, Ginzburg), treating conversion as the formation of a new word through changes in its paradigm. Others (Arnold) consider it to be a morphological syntactic word-building method, because it involves the semantic change, a change of the paradigm and a change of the syntactic function of the word. A purely syntactic approach (functional approach) to conversion is popular with linguists in Great Britain and the USA. They define conversion as a kind of functional change.

1. Verbs converted from nouns (denominal verbs) can express: a) an action characteristic of the object: ape — to ape (behave as apes do); b) instrumental use of the object: screw — to screw (‘fasten with a screw’); c) acquisition or addition of the object: fish — to fish; d) deprivation of the object: dust — to dust (‘remove dust from something’), skin — to skin (‘strip off the skin’).

2. Nouns converted from verbs (deverbal substantives) can express a) instance of the action: to jump — jump, to move — move; b) agent of the action: to help — help ‘a person who helps’; c) place of the action: to drive — drive ‘a path/road along which one drives‘; d) object or result of the action: to peel — peel ‘the outer skin of fruit taken off.

Some other patterns of conversion can be mentioned. 3. Adjectives > Nouns: supernatural, impossible, inevitable; 4. Participle > Adjectives: a standing man / rule, running water. But not all the pairs of such words can be formed by conversion. Some of them arose: (1) as a result of the loss of endings in the course of the historical developments of the English language: love, hate, rest, smell, work, end, answer, care, drink, (2) assimilation of borrowings: check, cry, doubt, change. Some linguists (Smirnitsky, Arbekova) call them patterned homonymy.

Minor types of word formation. Shortening While derivation and compounding represent addition, shortening, on the other hand, may be represented as subtraction, in which part of word or word group is taken away. Shortening can be called a process of wordcoining.

Clipping is a process of creating of a new word by shortening of the original polysyllabic word (prototype). According to what part is cut off we distinguish: final – doc (doctor), initial – net (Internet) medial clipping – poli-sci (political science).

Blending is combining parts of two words to form one. motel = motor + hotel brunch = breakfast + lunch, selectric = select + electric dancercise = dance + exercise. Sometimes only the first word is clipped, as in perma-press for ‘permanent-press’.

Back-Formation Back-formation is a process whereby a word whose form is similar to that of a derived form undergoes a process of deaffixation (the singling-out of a stem from a word which is wrongly regarded as a derivative). resurrect < resurrection enthuse < enthusiasm donate < donation orient < orientation A major source of back-formation in English is represented by the words that end with -er or -or and have meanings involving the notion of an agent, such as editor, peddler, swindler, and stroker. Because hundreds of words ending in these affixes are the result of affixation, it was assumed that these words too had been formed by adding -er or -or to a verb. So, edit, peddle, swindle, and stroke exist as simple verbs.

Abbreviation is the process and the result of forming a word out of the initial elements (letters, morphemes) of a word combination. (a) If the abbreviated written form is read like a word it is called an acronym — AIDS, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), radar (radio detecting and ranging), (b) The other subgroup of abbreviations is pronounces like a series of letters (initialisms) — S. O. S. , NFL (National Football League), B. B. C. (the British Broadcasting Corporation), (c) The term abbreviation may be used for a shortened form of a written word or phrase used in a text for economy of space and effort (graphic abbreviation) — L. A. , N. Y. , B. A. for Bachelor of Arts, ltd for limited, Xmas for Christmas.

Sound interchange may be defined as an opposition in which words or word forms are differentiated due to an alternation in phonemic composition of the root. The change may affect the root vowel: food N — feed V, root consonant: speak V — speech N, or both: life N — live V. It also may be combined with affixation: strong Adj. strength N, or with affixation and shift of stress: ‘democrat — de’mocracy. Distinctive stress: ‘conduct N — con’duct V, object, etc. Sound imitation is the formation of new words from sounds that resemble those associated with the object or action to be named, or that seem suggestive of its qualities: buzz, hiss, sizzle, cuckoo.

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